


The Interview Process

by Ylevihs



Series: How Not to Fall [42]
Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén
Genre: Gen, Kidnapping, References to Past Sexual Assault, Spoilers, headcanon heavy, mad dog - Freeform, non consensual drug use, references to past torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-24
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:41:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22872652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ylevihs/pseuds/Ylevihs
Summary: The only difference between an interview and interrogation is formality.
Series: How Not to Fall [42]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1327892
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	The Interview Process

There was no immediate recognition when the blindfold was removed. No wide eyed alarm or frantic motion to leave. No anger. Just dazed confusion. Rapid blinking. Most likely a concussion still poking around her brain.

Richard braced himself, prepared and at the same time completely unable to prepare himself for this. She was waking up. This was happening. The long reach of. Not death, he wasn’t dying, he knew what that felt like. But goodness, something close. Reaching down his throat to throttle him from the inside out. He swallowed hard and tried not to gag. 

Mild panic at not being able to breathe properly and having to force the body’s automatic responses into submission. She managed, in her own time, to bite back the pain and continue breathing through her nose. High pitched and echoing through the wide space. There came a slight struggle, a wave of dread, when she realized she had a needle in her neck. Realized something was being pumped into her body. Slow and methodical, then. Testing the bindings. Fingers twisted, elbows locked, ankles rolled. There was no give and Richard could feel resignation give way easily to indignation.

She looked up. Richard resisted the shudder. Barely.

Right. Change of plans. There was no way he was letting her control the flow of conversation. 

Regina’s eyes finally managed to focus and the only emotions found there were a brief flash of surprise followed by what could only be described as annoyance. Her eyes slipped off of Mad Dog and careened around to see nothing else in the gloom. Daniel had taken to hovering high above them when she had first woken up; faint radiation of worry and concern and anger and. Richard didn’t need to feel Ricardo’s thoughts to know what was going on in his head. He stood behind her, maybe four paces back. The expression on his face was anything but blank. Mia’s thoughts were distant. Excited but restrained. Curious and quick. She had been right about Charge and Mad Dog working together on something, but Herald? Hadn’t Mad Dog beaten the shi-. 

He did his best to shut them out and refocus.

Panic of his own surged up his throat when Regina looked back at him, taking in the Mad Dog armor. There was a slight effort being made to connect dots, but Richard quickly got the feeling that her thoughts were swimming out of even her own nets. It had been rare, exceptionally rare, that Richard had ever been able to see her mind fully. It had never been on purpose. And always subdued. Clouded over.

There was a mild, terrifying thrill playing through his head that he would soon, soon. Soon get inside the second to last place on earth he wanted to be.

She.

She didn’t know he was Mad Dog. 

And whatever she thought their connection may have been, she hadn’t expected to see him after her kidnapping. Mad Dog had, as far as Richard could tell through the haze, no known connection to her prized science project. Regina narrowed her eyes before huffing out through—a hard flinch—the annoyed sound turning into a pained whine as air left her nose. Good. Richard allowed himself the small bite of schadenfreude. It sank hideously slowly down his throat. She was making reasons. Trying to find connections.

“Good afternoon,” the modulator kept his voice from shaking, but it was a near thing. All of it felt too raw. Too close. Too much of him wanted to run. Too much of him wanted to rise over her and beat her down until she wasn’t. Until she couldn’t. Too much. Kill her. That urge was swept back into the shallow grave it had crawled out of. The Rat King helped shuffle loose dirt over it, squeaking gently. It didn’t like the sudden shift that his mind was trying to take. 

Dirt over his thoughts, why not dirt over himself, why not his own grave? He had one, he’d had a funeral and an empty grave and. And he had an empty body. Just waiting for him to come back and claim it. He’d done well as Mitzi. He’d been pressed and gorgeous and he could go there if he wanted and who would really ever know the difference and all of this could be over and done with. It wasn’t his responsibility to. To. He couldn’t run. Couldn’t run, now. Boxed himself into a new coffin by not being able to keep his mouth shut.   
A flicker quick glance to where Daniel was hovering. Watching him with a faint flutter of concern. Ready to swoop down.

Right.

He could do this. 

“I hope you didn’t find the drive over too uncomfortable?” steady. Steady and easy even though every inch of him wanted. Don’t think about it. Just move forward. Only way to go was forward, now. The only way out was through.

Regina, for her part, narrowed her eyes at him and whistled through her nose. It wasn’t just a brave face to put forward. She was reviewing everything she knew about Mad Dog; he was only a thorn in the side of local leaders. Not as a killer. Not as a threat to her. Not a threat until now. “Now, now, don’t be like that. You were warned to wear your seatbelt after all,” he could do this. Mad Dog could do this. 

A slight eye roll. “In any case, you’ll be pleased to know,” push through it. Keep going. Keep every bravado laced word calm and controlled. Don’t let her see you sweat. Couldn’t see sweat through the armor anyway. Behind her, Ricardo shifted his weight, glaring down at her seated frame. His fists were clenched tight. “I’ve already sent a message to your friend the Senator to let her know you’re going to be alright,” an easy lie. But only a lie. A mild misdirection to try and make this show seem connected to the Senator. It was more to serve as the hook he was hoping Miss Ochoa would bite onto. From the pulse coming from the old office, it seemed like she had.

It was a fool’s hope to think it would stick in Regina’s thoughts as well, but it was all he had to work with.

Richard couldn’t even begin to think about the risk of planting something in Regina’s head.

He couldn’t.

He could do it. If he really wanted to. Couldn’t he? Reach in and scramble her mind? Would he be. Stop that. Regina tilted her head slightly at the mention of Senator Carmichael and drew his attention back. Slippery but visible, her thoughts began coming in clearer and clearer. Trout getting caught in a rapidly freezing stream. The effects of time and the IV drip helping clear her system. He could. When all of this was over, he would. 

Richard exhaled heavily through the voice modulator; it did him the favor of sounding like a deep growl. And he let the Rat King take over monitoring the other people in the room. Shutting out their thoughts. He needed his focus to play the part of third party villain for as long as he could. Regina was making a narrative in her head about. Mad Dog cared about corruption in the system. He cared about bribes and kickbacks. He cared about dirty money and the poor little people being oppressed by the big bad boot heel of The System. Mad Dog was. Richard could follow the logic. And hated it. In her mind, somehow the two had met. He and Mad Dog. And he had convinced the mild mannered anarchist to fight in his corner for him.

For the sake of Ochoa’s interest, high above, Richard adjusted the topic back. He needed her to focus on the business between Carmichael and. 

“She and you made some very interesting deals while you were both in town, didn’t you? Deals that would look very bad for the Senator if they came to light. Now, I’m sure they were all done above the table. Nothing technically illegal,” he waved a gloved hand dismissively. Regina’s eyes watched the movement like a hawk. “But technicalities tend not to mean too terribly much during election season. And with her platform being about protecting America, I’m sure most of her constituents—and party members—aren’t going to be too happy to hear that her contracts with you involve selling her husband’s weaponry to Noble America’s,” the sarcasm was impossible to keep out of his voice. “Evil Enemies,” It was a reach. The contracts hadn’t been so bold as to name the buyers, but what was it they always said? Follow the money? The trail was clear enough for even the longest-term Senator to pick up on the tracks. It was a good lie; he could it feel it settling in her thoughts.

The reason why Mad Dog was here was unsettled, and she was trying to reconcile the—she thought that the bike rider who had taken out the other regene had been Ricardo. She had. Richard’s heart dropped hard, stomach rising into his nostrils to keep equilibrium. She had assumed that Richard would make his move, but she had expected it to happen at the airport. She’d expected him to try and take out the private plane. She expected him to try and kill her and was prepared to. Those were still too far back, too hidden in a semi-drugged miasma. She had plans to get him back. He couldn’t see what they were. Yet.

Now she was thrown off her game. It wasn’t Richard that was coming after her for revenge. It was this starry eyed anarchist trying to tear down the establishment who was using her as blackmail for a DC politician and trying to get revenge for what? Why for Richard? Were they friends? Lovers perhaps. Regina’s confused annoyance was slipping into simmering fury. Which was good, Richard reminded himself, angry people made mistakes. Angry people were easier to read. And Regina’s mind was getting horrifyingly clearer and clearer.

His throat felt dry. “Now. If you promise to be a good girl, we can take the gag out of your mouth. You’d like that wouldn’t you?” a ripple of fury. Oh? Someone didn’t like being talked to like a child? A barely stifled snort of his own anger. Somewhere above them Daniel’s concern pressed downward like snowfall. 

“I want to talk about what your side of the weapons deal was. I know who you work for and I want to know why a medical resource company is so interested in such nasty wasty guns,” playing dumb. Mad Dog doesn’t know Regina isn’t the head of their official research and development department. Richard took in another deep breath. “If you scream when we take your gag off, or if you refuse to answer my questions, I’ll have to do something to you that I really don’t want to do,” he let that sit for half a second. It registered. She’d already noticed that her chair was seated in the middle of the tarpaulin. And although she couldn’t see them clearly, slender metallic objects gleamed sharp in her periphery.   
“I am not a man of violence. But I’ll do what I have to if you can’t behave yourself,”

The old ‘I’ll do things you can’t imagine’ didn’t work for people like Regina. She could imagine quite a lot of things Mad Dog could do to her. She had such a creative imagination. That being said, the only thing Richard didn’t really want to do was re-gag her. Everything else was. Well. The Rat King made a gentle noise. Right. If she was uncooperative, he’d re-gag her and be forced to move on to Plan B. “Do you understand?” Mad Dog half barked out, cutting off a particularly clear image from Regina’s mind of Mad Dog ripping her teeth out.

A hot glare. A short, sharp nod.

The fear that shot off of her when Ricardo stepped up behind her and began untying the gag was. Richard tried not to revel in it. She hadn’t realized that someone was standing that close behind her. Sharp, jerking movements and then Ricardo threw the crusted gag on the floor, stepping back before Regina could try to turn her head and catch a glimpse of him. He was still throwing daggers with his eyes. Every inch of his body screamed for this to be over with. To stop this charade and make her hurt. But he restrained himself, entire form coiled tight to move if and when Richard gave the signal. Probably before he gave the signal, to be honest. The role reversal felt a little strange. Sidestep had always been content to let Charge take the lead.

Regina retched hard, gasping in huge gulps of air through her mouth, trying to clear out the taste of curdled blood and old vomit. She spat heavily on the. Tried to hit the ground with it and succeeded only in spitting onto her own chest. Mad Dog clicked his tongue, a truly strange sound through the modulator.

“Spitting is such a filthy habit,”

“Fuck you,” the sound of her voice, pained and ragged though it was, punched Richard hard in the hindbrain. Fear lanced through his system. His fingers went cold as blood raced away, adrenaline surging forward. Instantly back to new-born. Exposed and weak and wailing.

“So is using profanity,” he tried to sound as composed as he could. It came out bored. Unimpressed. Thank goodness. “Would you like a glass of water?” he heard himself offer. The glare returned and Richard steeled himself to hear her voice again.

“You think I’m going to fall for that?” she wiggled against her restraints gently. There was no intent to break free, it was to make a point. Mad Dog placed a melodramatic hand on his chest, playing at mock offense.

“So little trust! That sort of paranoia isn’t healthy,” she glared. It also meant the drugs weren’t fully into her system yet. Or they were being blocked by something she had already taken. Neither was a good sign. “It’s a ‘no’ on the water then? Alright,” keep it cool, stay cool, stay calm, stay collected. Breathe. Get it done. “Let’s begin with why your company wants those weapons in the first place,” silence. Both a blessing and a curse. “Experimental medicine? You’re planning on shooting tumors? Work with me a little,” it took every piece of muscle control in his body to force the chair to scoot forward. Towards her. “Or we can start with what your company offered in return?” another sullen break. It was easier to inch the chair back. To act like he was going to stand up.

Regina’s eyes widened a fraction and her “Wait,” was a little too firm and. God, her fear shouldn’t have felt that good. Fear and bitter anger and internal conflict. An overwhelming desire for control of the situation. Hatred at being helpless. “I don’t know what he’s told you,” she began and something hideous grabbed onto the edges of Richard’s mouth and pulled. Hidden behind the mask, he snarled at her. It must have been a bodily change as well, because Regina’s legs tried to tuck further under her own chair. Shoulders rose. 

“Who do you mean?” Richard heard the words but didn’t entirely register them until they were already out in the air. More growl than syllables.   
It made him want to spring out of his chair; Regina leveling her gaze at him. Familiar. Like she was pitying him. Hatred paced in his lungs, waiting for its chance. “We both know who I mean. The,” Richard could see the faint outline of her flipping through a mental thesaurus, searching for the appropriate term. Regene. Cuckoo. Escapee. Richard. An adjustment. “I’m sure he told you we did terrible things to him,” voice low and slow. Talking to a child. “But he isn’t a real person. You have to understand that. His body and mind were crafted very carefully by us—and it’s clearly been malfunctioning,” she tried that thread. Tried to see if there was an emotional connection. “False memories. Erratic emotions. He’s been hurting himself hasn’t he?” Richard stayed silent. Unable to answer. 

No. Unwilling, he told himself. Regina didn’t know it was him beneath the mask. She really, really didn’t.

“Wants to kill himself even? I’m sure that’s very difficult to see in your,” a risk. A bold one. Richard saw her mind turning Daniel over and over again like a product up for quality inspection. “Lover,” She kept Daniel nearby in her thoughts. Intending on coming back to him later. “And I’m sure he told you that everything wrong with him is our fault. And he’s not entirely wrong. But he ran away before he could finish correcting our mistakes. His mind is eating itself, caught in deep mental illness. And it’s because I didn’t fix him in time. You must understand. He’s not a real man. I made him and he’s my responsibility to look after. To make sure he’s safe,” a lilt at the end of her voice. Not a lie in the words, but a lie in the meaning. The last thing Regina wanted to hear was that Richard was dead. 

Well. Perhaps not the last thing. But it was high on the list. 

Mad Dog spoke for him. “What a fantastic mother,”

A sigh. So tired of explaining this, so sad that he didn’t believe her. So furious at being in this situation. She was slipping. “He’s been lying to you. It’s a compulsion of his. He feels he can’t trust anyone and has to lie to survive. It’s another part of his mind that’s broken,” ah, there was the Daniel thought she looked at earlier coming back around. “You already know he’s gone to the Rangers to do the same thing. To seduce them into helping him as well. He’s. Well I assume you know all about him sleeping with the young Ranger, Herald,” she picked at what she hoped was going to be a scab on Mad Dog’s heart. “You beat him up so badly…I remember that. It was because you found out Richard liked him and you were jealous,” there was a hint of pride there. “Wasn’t it?” Thinking she had gotten it nailed down. 

“You think I was seduced,” Mad Dog didn’t give her the satisfaction of acknowledging her pride. 

She squirmed. It was getting harder for herself to see the lines of her own thought. Harder to place down the tracks as the train of her thoughts grew closer and closer behind. 

Her expression slipped slightly; there was a slight shimmer in the disappearing clouds of her thought.

There it was, he realized, with a sort of giddy terror. It was diluted, to keep it from knocking her out too soon, but there it was, plain as day on her face and, increasingly, in her mind. 

Soon she would be finding it more and more trouble than it was worth to disagree with him. Finding it harder to. Focus. And feeling a little bit drunk. And he hadn’t even needed to so much as dip a toe into her mind.

“What are you putting into me?” but there was a distinct lack of distress. Annoyed. Confused. But not.

“An IV,” he offered back. She made a high pitched sound, whistling through her nose. And it took some effort to say the words but the grin itself was easy enough to put into his voice. “And some other pharmaceutical additives. Nothing your own company would hesitate to use though, I guarantee it,” and oh, goodness, he felt the spear of panic. The great unknown of ‘what does he mean by that’ followed hotly by all the things he could possibly mean by that. The joy ended. The more she came up with scenarios the more of his own dread could be felt welling up his chest. The more memories she was almost provoking. The. The quicker her heart beat, the more the drugs moved through her system. The quicker they took effect. It was getting harder and harder for her to concentrate on the scenes. Harder to recognize why she was feeling panicked in the first place.

Her nose didn’t hurt as much as it had a few minutes ago. And wasn’t that nice? And what was she so worried about an IV for? She’d gotten them before. Once before. But it had been fine. She’d be feeling better soon and what the fuck was in the IV?

“You said you thought he was seducing people,” he repeated, feeling his pulse in his teeth. It was a slow blink and then she shook her head, less to deny. Trying to clear it. Desperately trying to dig her fingers and teeth in and cling to her self-control. 

“Not,” a huff, from high in her chest. “Not like some common. No. He’s the victim, as I’m sure he wants you to think. He’s been hurt. Tortured, he told you. We had to run tests to see what had happened to you. And I’m sure he was. Scared,” nightmares every night, no matter how long or short, they never stopped they only changed in depth and Richard felt numbness on his tongue. “And confused at what was happening. But it had to be done. We needed the test results to see what sort of,” and another finger losing strength in the hold. Slipping away. “the sort of,” couldn’t find the word ‘injuries’. “Damage had been done to his internal systems. We were healing him. I was helping him,”

A sudden wild shift to her eyes. Scanning the room again. Anything. Any thing. Finding just Mad Dog. Finding only what he wanted her to. Settling. Relaxing against her own will. A quiet note of fury at having been forced to relax. Richard knew the feeling. Intimately. Encroaching helplessness. There was no room left for sympathy for her in his heart. 

“And the way he plays the victim is seductive. He won’t ask for. For help,” no slurring to her words. But they were starting to stick in her throat. “But you’ll want to give it to him. He’s,” something in her mind piped up against the artificial fog. “He’s a psychic you know. And I’m sure he’s looked at your thoughts and told you exactly the. The. Right thing. That you needed to hear. To help him. To love him. Manipulating you,”

It was out before Richard could stop it, hissing between his teeth. “You don’t have a clue what he’s capable of,” Regina took that her own way, twisting it to fit her needs. 

“He’s hurt you,” thinking she had confirmation. 

“You hurt him,” Richard felt it bubbling up and over, boiling in his veins. Anger was dangerous. And he couldn’t stop it. “You tortured him. You wanted him to suffer,”

“I did what was nececesarry!” sudden rush of anger and a slur to her words. Regina’s mind was scrambling. This wasn’t happening. “He isn’t a man. He isn’t even really a he. He’s my life’s work. I. I. I have. Spent decades perf…perfecting the pr-process. If he hadn’t. If he’d never gotten out the first time,” her thoughts were starting to run, unhinged, in any direction they could find. 

“The first time.” An open wound. Sore and bleeding for the both of them. For their own personal failures. 

“It was a. A fluke. Thought he had died and then. Monthsss…years? Later,” the drug was working itself into her high cognitive functions, urging them to take a nap. Take a break. Take it easy. Regina’s eyes were losing a bit of their sharpness, struggling to focus on him. “Years later. He’d. He was. We found him. Hiding as a vigililante. Working with. Marshal Ch-charge,” 

“He was a hero,” the words were foreign in his mouth. Bitter tasting on his tongue. Had he ever thought of himself as one? Had. Yes. He had. Sidestep had been a hero, despite all the other things he had also been. “It was how you found him,” he pushed, cold horror pulling at his limbs. “When he started helping the Rangers. When he helped stop the Nanosurge. When he started saving lives was when you decided he needed to be stopped. He needed to be punished. Tortured. Raped. Studied,” his voice was cracking and he couldn’t be made to care. It was taking every fiber of control. Hands clenched so tightly the armor was creaking. “You never cared that what you did was hurting him. The screaming only bothered you because it was distraction,”

Regina stared into the middle distance, blinking. Trying hard. Fighting back and failing. 

“I needed to get him back,” voice weaker. “Needed to see,” Softer. Speaking through miles of barbituate laced cotton. Richard could feel the thoughts sluggishly moving around the front of her mind, lost and useless. She stared dully at the restraints around her waist for a moment or two and her mind let out one last quiet and desperate plea.

Deeper than marrow.

Years and years of Pavlovian response started waking up to the dinner bell that she was in danger. That he needed to do something to protect her from it. The World. Everything. Himself. The thought was knocked back. Beaten back. Ground into the dirt until it squealed and died. He couldn’t kill Regina but he could kill the urge to protect her. Kill the urge to forget all the things she’d done to him in favor of all the things he’d been trained to do.

“And you need him back now, don’t you,” the hatred was plain in his voice. “To do the same as you did before,” not a question. Not even half a question. “You’ll tear him apart like a kid breaking open a new radio, trying to see what changed on the inside to make it tick differently,” a distant nod. Hard to keep her eyes open. Hard to focus on his words. She managed to keep her gaze on him when he stood. Had enough of her primal instincts working to flinch back. “Do you know why you’re here?”

Shakily. Thoughts trying so hard to behave. Slipping away. Out. Tried to wet her lips. Tried to look up at the mask and only managed to look at the chest plate. A shake of the head. There was just enough there. Just barely. 

Mad Dog took a step forward on to the plastic tarp. Crinkling under his boots. Knee as he kneeled down. Almost face to face. Enough for her to see her reflection in the helmet visor. 

“You’re here to answer to me, Regina. For all of the things you’ve done,” it should have been difficult. It should have been hard. But there was hatred in his lungs and fury in his blood and it was easy to reach up and tug the helmet off his head. His face was the last thing she got to see before the drugs funneled into her system finally knocked her out cold. 

It was worth it to see the terrified gleam of recognition in her eyes, right before the lights inside went out.


End file.
